INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

SISU-360

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics vary by section, may be repeated for credit with different topic. Rotating topics including race and international relations, cultural diplomacy, and international education. May be taken A-F only. Prerequisite: SISU-206 and SISU-260.

SISU-360

001

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

FALL 2015

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Intercultural Communications

The primary focus of this course is on the interaction of people from various cultures, both domestically and internationally. The approach is broadly interdisciplinary and applied with special emphasis on cross-cultural negotiation, management, conflict and adaptation. The course also considers such issues as cultural impacts on economic and political development, the mass media and cross-cultural conflict, multicultural management, and re-entry transition stress.

SISU-360

002

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

FALL 2015

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Global Leadership across Cultures

This course provides an in-depth introduction to global leadership. It prepares students to do global work effectively in complex environments with people from various cultures. By examining global leadership in cross-cultural context, students prepare themselves for working overseas or for working domestically with people from different cultures.

SISU-360

A01

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

SUMMER 2015

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Cultures in Contact, Cultures in Conflict: Imagining and Constructingthe "Other"

Grounded in a thorough examination of the various theories of society, such as social Darwinism, and designed around a comparative and multidisciplinary set of scholarly works and literary writings, this course explores the colonial, postcolonial, and imperial interactions between the West and the rest of the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It looks at the ways the perception of differences informs reality and conditions the imagining and the construction of the racial, ethnic, and national others. On a more fundamental level, this course questions the meaning of modernity and its civilizing processes steeped in the common myth of progress and betterment of itself through rationalization and institutionalization. The comparative and multidisciplinary design of the course aims at helping students develop a more nuanced way of studying the subject, and by doing so, it exposes students to new ways of critical thinking.

SISU-360

003

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

FALL 2015

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Gender in South Asia: Colonialism and Beyond

This upper-level multidisciplinary course draws upon history, politics and sociology to analyze gender issues in South Asia. Beginning with British colonialism, followed by indigenous efforts at social reform (mid-nineteenth century), and the role of nationalism (early twentieth century), the course highlights the emergence of women's movements and grassroots activism in post-colonial South Asia. Case-studies from select countries explore challenges to gender justice posed by politics, religion, law, family and sexuality, Thematic as well as, chronological approaches anchor the analyses.

SISU-360

004

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

FALL 2015

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

'The West and the Rest': Discourse and Power in InternationalDevelopment

The great sociologist, Stuart Hall, once stated, 'Our ideas of "East" and "West" have never been free of myth and fantasy, and even to this day they are not primarily ideas about place and geography'. This course examines International Development with a focus on the colonial and post-colonial discourses of the modern, civilized 'West' and the uncivilized, pre-modern 'Rest'. This historical perspective offers reflections on relations of race, class, gender and culture in the making of International Development. The course gives particular weight to the perspectives and voices of colonized subjects and citizens of the global South to understand the effects of these ideas on the modern era.

SISU-360

001

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

SPRING 2016

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Visuality in Africa

The image holds a special place in the social imaginary, and has a long and polemical history of illuminating the Dark Continent to the external gaze. This course examines theoretical and methodological approaches to visual analysis and its application in Africa. The course emphasizes how the visual makes sense of the social world, and its use in domination and self-expression. While examining the politics of representation as a general framing device, the course focuses on representations of Africa/(ns) and by Africans. This includes colonial and missionary imagery, advertising aimed at Africans and which has used African imagery to sell its products, Hollywood depictions, Black nationalist propaganda, Rastafari and pan-African imagery, famine porn, various expressions of African self-portraiture in pre-colonial through neoliberal times, and the visual in the ethnographic imagination, in photography and ethnographic film.

SISU-360

002

INT'L SERVICE UNDERGRADUATE

SPRING 2016

Course Level: Undergraduate

Topics in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture (3)

Identity, Culture and War

Why do nations go to war? More often than not the textbook answers are grounded in strategic considerations and matters of national interest. This course goes beyond strategic thinking and engages the identity and cultural dynamics that frame and legitimize organized violence. Special emphasis is placed on war and imperial conquest; maintenance of empires and decolonization; masculinity and racism; violence as a sign of modernity e.g. drones; war and nationalism; globalization and war. The course is multi-media oriented and includes extensive historical and theoretical texts.